Teaching & Learning

Rutgers Opens Center To Study School Libraries

A new research center at Rutgers University intends to build on
evidence that well-equipped school library media centers can boost
student achievement.

The Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries,
launched at the New Brunswick, N.J., campus this month, will promote
further study of the potential for school libraries to support
instruction, the dynamics of effective programs, and the training and
resources that library staff members need to best serve students.

"On the one hand, we inherently believe that school libraries are
important, but what we don't really understand is how school libraries
actually enable students to learn," said Ross J. Todd, the center's
research director. "Saying that school libraries are good is not
enough. We have got to come up with rich evidence that school libraries
make a difference."

The center will also provide professional development to help
practitioners, and conduct workshops on libraries and learning to be
offered within school districts and at professional meetings
nationwide. The center will disseminate research findings to school
librarians and teachers through its Web site to help them put the
findings into practice quickly, Mr. Todd said.

Pay-Boost Study

Research on the impact that a new compensation system for Denver
teachers has on the academic lives of their students will continue, as
expected, as a result of a recent grant.

The Boston-based Community Training and Assistance Center received
$750,000 from seven foundations and one private donor to complete the
final year of the four- year study. The pooled funding came from the
Broad Foundation, the Daniels Fund, the Denver Foundation, the
Donnell-Kay Foundation, the Piton Foundation, the Rose Community
Foundation, the Sturm Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor. All
but the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation are located in Denver.

Researchers, educators, and policymakers have been following the
compensation experiment, which pays educators in 16 schools up to
$1,500 bonuses annually for improving student achievement, since it
began in fall 1999. They hope to find out if performance pay improves
the quality of teaching and student learning, as advocates say it
will.

Geography Into History

Geography can be a vital ingredient in any K- 12 history course, but
teachers need to do more than point to places on maps where historical
events occurred, say geography education advocates.

Teachers must be ready to explain how historical events were shaped
by the terrain, natural resources, climate, and other geographic
features of regions, according to researchers at the Gilbert M.
Grosvenor Center of Geographic Education, based at Southwest Texas
State University in San Marcos.

"Despite the fact that teachers of history and geography pay lip
service to the doctrine that 'you can't teach one subject without the
other,' ... little high-quality interdisciplinary (history/geography)
teaching takes place," asserts a booklet written by center
associates.

The booklet says, for example, that lessons about World War II
should point out that it sparked the migration of Americans,
particularly racial minorities, to boomtowns where factories produced
arms for the military. And in teaching about the postwar era, teachers
can point out that mobility continued in those years as Americans moved
to the Sun Belt and away from the industrial cities of the Northeast
and Midwest.

That recent publication, along with another, give examples of how to
integrate geography into U.S. history courses: "Time and Space
Convergence: A Joint History-Geography Curriculum" and "The Best of
Both Worlds: Blending History and Geography in the K-12 Curriculum."
Both were underwritten by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in
Washington.

No Resting on Laurels

Even though Singapore's students have aced recent international
exams in mathematics and science, the nation's government is
underwriting an effort to improve teaching and learning.

The Singapore Ministry of Education and the National Institute of
Education—which is part of Nanyang Technological
University—will devote the next five years to trying to improve
teachers' practice in math, science, and literacy. The literacy
research will cover the learning of English, Chinese, Malay, and
Tamil—the four official languages of the nation, which is made up
of an island and nearby islets in Southeast Asia.

The new research center will be evaluating curriculum, particularly
in light of changes that came after 1997 that focused more on real-life
situations and hands-on learning. Research from the project will lead
to recommendations for the nation's curriculum. Singapore is
cooperating with the United States to exchange information about each
other's curricula. ("U.S., Singapore Agree to
Cooperate on Math and Science," Sept. 18, 2002.)

The Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice is budgeted to
spend $49 million Singapore dollars (about $28 million in U.S.
dollars), and plans to have 50 researchers contributing.

Author, Author

Brian Crosby first proposed paying top teachers as much as $100,000
in an article that appeared on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles
Times. The response to that 1998 piece, which was a call to revamp
the way teachers are paid, inspired the high school English instructor
to flesh out his ideas in a book.

Using weekends for research, and getting up at 4:30 a.m. to write
before starting class at Herbert Hoover High School in Glendale,
Calif., Mr. Crosby completed a manuscript for The $100,000 Teacher:
A Teacher's Solution to America's Declining Public School System
during the next two years. He found a small publisher willing to bring
the book out.

And then the hard part began.

"There are 3 million public school teachers," said Mr. Crosby, who
is 45 and the father of a 4-year-old boy. "I don't think they are aware
[my book is] out there."

So almost since the book's spring 2002 release, he's waged his own
publicity campaign, with modest success. He's had media appearances and
a recent profile in the Los AngelesTimes. But the book
has sold only about 2,200 copies.

It appears to be one of few published views of school reform written
by a working K-12 teacher.

In it, Mr. Crosby cuts a wide swath through the world of U.S.
education policy, with something to please and something to disgruntle
just about every "establishment" group, including those that criticize
the education establishment. He faults teachers' unions for opposing
most attempts to pay teachers according to how well they perform in the
classroom, but calls for greater government regulation of teacher
credentialing. He also says most education courses in universities are
"Mickey Mouse."

"I thought it was time for somebody in the profession to stand up
and say, 'We have some problems in education,'" Mr. Crosby said in an
interview.

Let There Be Music

The nation's largest advocacy group for music education has teamed
up with professional music organizations to launch a Web-based program
that helps parents and educators preserve or expand school music
programs.

The Reston, Va.-based National Association for Music Education, or
MENC, helped kick off the Support Music program last month. The
initiative is intended to give music education champions information
and strategies for building support for programs among community
members and policymakers.

The Web site, Supportmusic.com, was developed in response to
expected cuts in school music budgets. MENC predicts that program cuts
will affect some 30 million students nationwide, or about 60 percent of
K-12 students, by reducing or eliminating their choices for music
study.

"While today's difficult economic climate is a reality for school
districts nationally," MENC President Willie Hill said in announcing
the program, "we do not believe the power of music should automatically
be quieted by tight margins."

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